Tag Archives: Pessimism

Confidence is one quality, which you need universally at all times and spaces. You need it in board room or bed room; whether you are an interviewer or being interviewed; you are addressing an audience or asking a question; whether you are a supervisor or subordinate; you want to build a relationship or break it; whether you are joking or juggling around!

Confidence brings you dynamism as well as optimism. It improves your body language, as also spoken language!

What exactly is confidence!

Surf the internet and you would find host of articles/information on what is confidence; but it does not hit the right chord and leaves you confused.

Correct definition of confidence is “Alignment of mind and body, with no thoughts that drag you in the past”!

So, when you feel confident, you would observe that your mind and body work in full synchronism. You feel good, when you are confident. Therefore, your body releases happy hormones – endorphins, dopamine and serotonin.

9 steps to secure and soar up your confidence

There are lot of material and advisories available on subject; none other than following steps can drive you towards the very definition of confidence:

Do only what you believeDo not venture into any talk or task for which you don’t have conviction. You would always be better off by not doing anything when you lack belief.

Believe in selfIf you can feel your thoughts and breaths, it proves that you have all powers as anyone else on this planet. Rope this in your mind as your top belief!

Listen and learnTalking is least important but listening cum learning is most. Read and learn the subject, you want to deal keeping no pressure on mind.

Make and take notesVery important is to write down key points when you listen, read or mull. Supplement those by your own explanations.

Be optimisticWhat has to go wrong would go wrong; but what has to go right would also go right! So, shade away your anxieties, fear and pessimism.

Be enthusiasticWhatever you do, do it by your heart; love it; take pride in it whether big or small. That makes your mind positive!

Keep it simple and straightSurprised that simplicity brings confidence? It certainly does!When you keep it simple, your mind will not get cluttered with too many thoughts. It would keep only relevant thoughts and that it key to bring clarity and confidence in you.If simplicity is gold; keeping it straight adds to its glitter. You would hit the point directly and avoid getting digressed.

Be respectfulYou can be truly respectful only when you raise your self-esteem and reduce your ego. When you give respect – be it your boss, customer or audience – you get it back and that is a sure shot to swell your confidence.

Keep fitStaying fit is one of our top duties. Put your faith in balanced diet and exercises. Yoga and focusing on your breathing with eyes closed (extremely simple and effective form of meditation) help you to align your body and mind.

So, how about taking above steps forward to bring/boost confidence? Return gift that you would get is charisma!

(Credit for this post goes to one of the guests visiting this website, who inspired me to pen it.)

Everyone experiences his/her golden or defining moment once or several times during life time. Such moment or turning point is an extremely important event, when you feel a step change in your paradigm! To many, defining moments are very conspicuous; whereas others may not be conscious of same. However, if you become aware of golden moments’ arrival, you can reap rich dividends.

Defining moment of Mahatma Gandhi came on 7th June, 1893, when he, the 24 year old Indian lawyer in South Africa, was forcibly ejected out of a train by local authorities in middle of night and winter for holding valid ticket for first-class compartment but refusing to move to third-class. Immediate aftermath of this incidence gave birth to future leader of unprecedented non-violence movement that no one else could imagine earlier!

Defining moment of iconic tennis player Steffi Graf came not by winning first time Wimbledon final, but by beating then world’s no. 1 ranked player Martina Navratilova in Lipton Cup semifinal in 1987!

Let me share 2 of several defining moments, which I have experienced so far. 1st one came, when I was in 4th standard in school and my class teacher came to meet my mother. Being afraid of her, I had hidden myself; but I heard her complaining that I am not good at studies. That moment changed my academic performance down side up for years to come. Next one came for a very strange reason. Having score good marks, I had to apply for 5 year engineering graduation under family pressure, though my core interest was to go for research in physics. I then tried to fail myself in 1st year by deliberately not preparing well (not an honest act!) and demonstrate to my family that engineering is no good for me. Yet I passed through. That fateful day taught me “Nothing is impossible”!

What happens, when defining moments arrive?

All pieces of your erstwhile puzzle or struggle fall in place to hand over success to you!

You experience a step change in your paradigm and perspective!

Bright light of thoughts signals the end of dark tunnel, you have been in.

You feel inspired and incredibly confident.

You are truly ready to let go your past and start a fresh lease of life.

You experience new energy and new balancing point of your life/pursuits.

Your focused efforts, even in event of failures, start giving you fruits!

Invariably golden moments arrive when your struggle with negative situations starts to deliver success; from lows, you experience highs; odds translate into opportunities! When you are stuck with your work or relationship, your sincerity appears to have lost significance, you are deprived of what you deserve, results are remote and then suddenly you see things starting to fall in place and your hopes begin to build, is when your golden moments arrive!

Now, how to accelerate the arrival!

Yes; you have power to accelerate!

Rule# 1

Never become negative, when negative events overtake!

Look around; negative news always get highlighted. Masses do mistake of dealing or greeting difficulties with anxiety, anger, frustration, impatience and pessimism. You would be under tremendous pressure from your own mind to follow what you normally witness; but never succumb to this temptation.

Rule# 2

Don’t flick between negatives and positives!

This is where most goof. Facing odds, they somehow gather courage and make genuine efforts. But, when results don’t show up, they go back and squander what they did. Hold on resolutely to the right, come what may! You must double your drive against negativity until it diminishes.

Rule# 3

Never give up hope for good!

Under pressure, you would have every reason to believe that manipulation, greed or evil survives; but history shows that is never ever!

Rule# 4

When good arrives, don’t get addicted to it!

Good is alluring, especially if it comes after bad and you would tend to get addicted to it. Don’t get obsessed with good results; you would forget what you did to get that and then go back. Think having or being good is just a normal way of your life!

Rule# 5

Live in present and for goals of your life!

No matter what is your preaching or learning, fact is no one being or thing is more important than this to you! Mere intentions would be harmful; but implementation would be heavenly!!

Rule# 6

Do not stumble due to step change!

When such moments arrive, many fall in utter disbelief! They don’t manage such momentous moments well. They become ecstatic, get ego boost or go overboard and in the process, they bugger it up! Embrace this change with élan and humility. Endure it to bring new order in your career or life!!

Sometimes you get up in the morning with not too good a feeling. You do not feel enthusiastic or excited. You feel your energy has been drained. On that day, you may experience lot of things going wrong. You would get into a tiff with your spouse or dear one/s for a trivial reason right in the morning. While preparing to leave for work, you may not find important document which you need to carry or receive an unimportant call, leaving you very irritated. On way to office, you could find this day too many red traffic signals or getting stuck in traffic. On reaching office, you may find e mails from upset customers and receive a piece of mind from your boss, which leaves you wondering what more disappointments are in the pipe line today! You somehow finish your day and retire to bed hoping that a better day would emerge tomorrow!!

Can you be sure that tomorrow morning would be better than yesterday? Normally not! If it turns out to be better, what exactly changes? Most people are unable to figure out or don’t care to figure out. They tend to defer it to their destiny or divine. But, then cycle of decent or damn days continues, so do fun and frustration!

Is it possible to start every morning with same zeal and zest, energy and excitement, hope and happiness?

When things don’t happen as per our wants, we react – why? We feel irritated or infuriated. We reject the things, if those are not right from our view point. We don’t know to accept what has already gone wrong. We rebel or remorse against the reality, if it is bitter; but rejoice, if it is sweeter! This is precisely our problem! Reality is always real, whether we accept or reject; then why treat a reality differently and relate it to our taste?

It has been drilled in our mind that wrong or unwanted things must be greeted with agony, anger or anxiety and embrace right or wanted things with ecstasy. See implications of such approach:

We lean heavily on negativity and hence become prone to same.

Worries or whining is like a whirlpool of distress, which can only suck you deeper! Negativity attracts negativity.

It shakes your confidence and composure!

It fractures your belief in prudence and propriety!

It generates a bias for pessimism!

Your de-stress is key to design your day!

Everyone believes stress is natural; but that does not take away the fact that it plays havoc, regardless how powerful or poor one is! Stress defocuses and disorients you, may be by a small degree. When stress is not major, you may not notice it; but it is there in your sub-conscious mind. Silent stress is far more damaging than loud one, because latter would take you to the peak of your problems quickly and hurt you so much that you would then rush for quick healing!

Silent stress is very challenging because most people are unable to recognize it! It could be as little as a thought that my morning was not good; so now my day would not be good either. This thought is good enough to encourage you to commit a series of mistakes to draw you deeper into disappointment. That day, you are not able to manage your boss, customer, sub-ordinates or spouse as well as you do another day!

Here are few things you could practice to do to defeat an adverse day:

When you get up in the morning, remind yourself that problems are part of life.
Practical and real world is where problems are present and not absent.

If anything adverse shows up, avoid reciprocating it with your reaction. Just observe and be to yourself.
We all have learnt that reaction to wrong things is our right; but in reality, this is absurd.

Carry out a simple check in morning and during day – if you are free from stress, you have to be happy; conversely, if you are not feeling happy, you ought to have stress!
When stress is absent, your energy and excitement levels get boosted!!

Like cancer virus, viruses of ego and prejudices are present in all of us and these substantially weaken our immunity to stress.

Stress, which can be in form of anxiety, anger, agony, fear, frustration or obsession, is nothing but conflicts of thoughts in our mind. Source of such stress is always emotions from your past. So, live in present to live stress free!

Common belief that “what does not start well will also not end well” is bunk!
It is purely in your hands, when you want to let go your feelings from immediate or distant past. Terrible things can translate into terrific things at any point of the day, by taking a pause and redeeming yourself.

If you are conscious or anxious that thing/s should not go wrong, probability is high that those would go wrong! So, your best bet is not to guess what would go right or wrong.

So, substance of the story is by linking exciting events to euphoria, you also link disappointing happenings to your distress. Drop both links; you would then gain freedom to freely design your day!

By happy-go-lucky people, I don’t mean those, who are thick skin, carefree, care-the-less or who appear to keep themselves aloof from pain but not from pleasure! I am referring to those people, who keep themselves happy and able to manage their stress well!

I am sure that you know some happy-go-lucky people. To understand what they do and what works for them, let us first look at following examples:

Doctors rarely fall prey to diseases they treat!Practicing doctors rarely fail to attend to their duties. They usually do not pick-up infections from the patients they treat. Popular belief is that by getting exposed to infections repetitively, they become immune and that they take precautionary measures like washing their hands after checking their patients etc. But, many doctors are not known to take such precautionary measures. Then, there are several social workers, whose pursuit is to meet patients, spend time with them and boost their morals. Even these noble workers hardly get impacted by illness of patients!
There seems to be no scientific explanation how frequent exposure to infections enhances your immunity! But, one thing is strikingly similar among doctors and social workers – they don’t get disturbed and distracted from diseases; for them, it is just a routine!

Why doctors’ evergreen advice in every illness “Be happy; you would be o.k.”?You must have noticed this! Doctors do try to create optimism and hopes in their patients!! I have witnessed many, who have faith in their doctors, recover much faster than those, who doubt them. Why?
It is certain that optimism and hopefulness help your health!

Military people invariably enjoy and sustain sound health!Fitness exercises and hard work definitely help maintain good health. But, there are lot of civilians, who are health freaks but don’t seem to benefit as much as military people do. What is worth noting is that military people are healthy; but not necessarily happy!
There is one stark difference military personnel have as opposed to civilians – they are much focused and don’t allow themselves to get distracted in normal course!

Saintly people are seldom sick!They are calm, less complicated and have minimum conflicts of thoughts! Their wants or needs are very little. The net result is a stress free life and that seems to be key to their good health.

During exciting time, excellent health endures like that of bride and bridegroom at time of their wedding!When you are truly excited or having a hearty laugh, your body releases such hormones, which make your immune system stronger. At such time, you suddenly find yourself very focused and free from worries!

Now, signs that happy-go-lucky people emit

Compare the above examples with the clear signs, happy-go-lucky people reflect:

They are free from stress or manage their stress well.

They don’t overtly get disturbed by distractions.

They are optimistic and hence dislike company of pessimists.

They strike good balance between work and life.

They are not perfectionists.

They are able to minimize struggle with self.

They take on the life as it comes.

They avoid being furious or frustrated.

They don’t allow dust of doubt and rust of past to set-in!

They never nag and always enjoy what they eat!!

So, we can safely conclude that happy-go-lucky persons are unique combination of unique qualities of medical practitioners, military men to saints and stimulated ones! We often confuse with superficially happy-go-lucky ones, who are complacent, care free or careless, casual or enjoying being in comfort zones! Such people have misplaced happiness.

It is noteworthy that happy people are invariably healthy; but healthy people are not necessarily happy and therefore, eventually they lose good health!

How to be happy-go-lucky!

Gainfully engaged mind brings wellness; whereas idle mind triggers illness!As a matter of fact, mind can never remain idle. Typically, when we say idle mind, we mean no physical activity; but our mind is actually busy with conflicting thoughts. A gainfully engaged mind would automatically drive you to do productive work!

Stark truth of nature is that nothing is more powerful in your life than your own mind!! Your understanding, knowledge, ability to recognize, to have feeling or sensation and consciousness in general is possible only because of your mind. Life and mind are 2 integral parts of one whole i.e. You!

Mind is as old as life itself; but ironically it is only in very recent years that science has understood its relevance. Science knows constitution of brain; but not of mind. General comprehension is that mind means not only brain; but much more, which is beyond any definition as of now.

What is mind

There is no unanimity as of now on what and where exactly mind is, across all sections of societies and branches of science in the world, though it has supreme spiritual and scientific significance.

There is variety of beliefs about mind, one of which is – it is integral part of the physical body; but it leaves the body when a man dies and enters new life. How and why are unclear! Another school of thoughts or even some faiths state that mind is metaphysical; physically does not reside in our body and is controlled by divine forces. Whatever we may believe, one thing is certain mind is a powerful Maya (illusion) and mirage!

Most widely acceptable idea is that mind is closely linked to the brain; it cannot be physically observed but its effect can be seen and captured through our brain and nervous system. Whatever comes to our mind – images or thoughts, gets stored in the memory of our brain. Our brain has 3 types of memories – sensory, short term and long term, the combination of which ensures encoding of incoming information, storage and retrieval like a computer.

Some of hard realities are that your mind is only linked to you and hence, it cannot be an entity which is separate from you. When you say “Me and my mind”, does it mean 2 separate entities? They are not; both are one and same. You get confused simply because you have to observe as well as assess by one and same one entity i.e. mind!

Rules of mind

Power of mind of all normal human beings is the same!Power of mind of the wealthiest person – Bill Gates is no different than that of a poor person or that of highly intelligent person like Einstein to ace golfer Tiger Woods!! The difference lies in degree of its use or misuse.

What differs from person to person is response of mind in identical situations!It is totally dependent on past memory of the person.

State of mind is determined by your current thoughts, which is mix of present and past images or memories.

What you would do next is linked to what you are thinking now.

What would happen to you next is largely influenced by how are you perceiving or contemplating now.If you are having positive or good state of mind, positive things would happen; good news would come. If you are frustrated, unfolding events would make you more frantic! Most time, you have mixed thoughts which you seldom realize and therefore, mixed results appear, leaving you wondering why that has happened even when you were positive. Fact was that you had mixed state of mind.

Once a thought or image comes in your mind, you can’t erase it!All you can do is to allow other thoughts to superimpose on it and that way you get a feeling that you have forgotten it. But remember, it can still surface in future.

Thoughts, which your mind allows to get linked to your sensory or nervous system, become your notions or emotions!These would surface in your mind repetitively. This is how your traits, habits or beliefs are formed.

More you try to forcefully remove or repel unwanted thoughts in your mind, more would these resist and persist!Only way to remove unwanted thoughts is to allow them to come but ignore!!

Efficient use of mind power

From above it is clear that mind has full role in kind of efforts you make and effects that you realize. It is your mind driving, if you experience:

Success or sorrow

Ecstasy or enmity

Fun or frustration

Happiness or hurt

Optimism or pessimism

Few things that you can do to make good use of your mind power are:

Practice to focus on just single thoughts.

Observe your thoughts; but don’t obstruct same.

Ignore “conflicts of thoughts” or “unwanted ones” as much as you can.

Stop to live in past.

Reinforce only wanted thoughts.

Repetitively emphasize in your mind that nothing negative, however tempting or justifying, would ever help. It can only hurt!

Align most of your actions towards your happiness, health and goals of your life.

So, it is all about and in your mind!If you follow above, you are sure to get command on your life or destiny!